


Good Day Sunshine

by untilourapathy (gwendolen_lotte)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 06:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13335534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolen_lotte/pseuds/untilourapathy
Summary: A child goes on an adventure. He says goodbye.





	Good Day Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magpie_fngrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_fngrl/gifts).



> Happy early birthday, Magpie! I hope you enjoy this xx

The boy ducks behind the alcove to watch the sun, sparkling and shimmering and sweet. He waves at it, darting his little tongue out to capture it, taste it, eat it. 

He wonders if the sun gets lonely too, sometimes. 

The rays are raw on his back as he peels his socks off, sticky with adventure grime and adventure sweat. Pawing at his shoulder like a Kneazle coming home, the wind accompanies him as he treks back home, wrapping him up in a shivery blanket. He tosses a few rocks forth over the beckoning stream, stepping on them without a care as he lets the twigs and moss drive into his feet, tender and pale. 

The stream gnaws away at his feet as it pools around his good trousers, begging him to come back some day. He can smell the last days of summer in the balmy air and knows it won’t be long soon. Kissing it goodbye as he runs from the stream, he hurtles through the trees, solemn and stern and everything he should be. 

But he isn’t – he’s the boy with the sun as his favourite playmate. His hair is blonde-bright and shiny-spun, infused with the sun’s love. Draco likes to remember that every time he sees himself in the mirror. Not Papa, but the sun, ever-present and everywhere.

He is the child of the warmth and he thinks that’s because everywhere else is so, so cold. 

*

He carries the warmth into the Manor with him like he carries the tokens in his pocket. Little things, like milk caps from pints left to freeze on the Muggles’ doorstep, all creamed up at the top, and a left shoelace. He places them under his bed ever so carefully, mindful of the elves and their tendency to rummage. Mummy wouldn’t approve, he thinks. He pauses, considering that, and tucks them just a little further behind the four-poster, in that fissure in the wall where he stores his best finds from his best adventures. The Manor is full of things, a few more wouldn’t go amiss. 

Sometimes, he feels like he could choke with all the things and things and things. 

He cleanses himself in the bathwater left untouched, making sure to dab behind his ears just in case. Trotting down to dinner, the sun running with him through the corridors, he steals glimpses at long-forgotten porcelain and veneer-stained fixtures up on the ceiling where he’s too small to reach. 

Some nights, when he’s chilly even under his winter duvet, he dreams. Of growing growing growing, so tall he can see what’s there, what’s in the trees, what’s in the sky. Mummy always says he’ll be tall like Papa. He’s not sure he wants to be like Papa. He fists the twill of his second-best trousers and remembers to breathe. He doesn’t want to be so scary that he feels like he can’t breathe. Even in his second-best trousers. 

Draco’s at the double doors now, the one with the family crest. He looks up hopefully for his friend the sun, but it seems even suns have homes to go to. 

‘Draco,’ his father says, stoic like the trees, ‘no more running about. We can’t have you traipsing round the Cotswolds like a commoner, can we?’

Draco mouth opens itself, the warmth of today’s adventure spilling over all the cold he’s learned. 

‘Or don’t you want to go to Hogwarts?’

He turns to learn to love the cold.

**Author's Note:**

> unbetaed, sorry for any mistakes xx


End file.
